Free Minds & Free Markets

Comedian Drew Carey has become a full-fledged media sensation:
His self-titled television show, which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
EST on ABC, is beginning its third season ensconced in the Nielsen
top 20 (and locked in a ratings war with NBC's Third Rock from
the Sun); his cable specials, most recently HBO's The Mr.
Vegas All Night Party, command huge audiences; and his book
Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined (for
which he reportedly received a $3 million advance) hit stores in
September.

Carey's appeal stems in large part from his Everyman status.
The Washington Post once described him, not inaccurately,
as "a tubby dork in a crew cut and thick-rimmed glasses...[who is]
lovably and goofily awkward....Part of Carey's charm is that he
manages to seem out of place in every setting." In his sitcom,
which shares certain blue-collar affinities with shows such as
Roseanne and Grace Under Fire, his character is
an assistant personnel manager at a Cleveland department store. He
is the consummate working stiff, besieged on all sides by an
indifferent employer, hostile co-workers, aimless friends, and a
strong sense of his own inadequacy and lack of success. From this
potentially grim reality, Carey squeezes immense humor (and
precious little sentimentality).

Carey's appreciation for the exasperations of everyday life is
matched by a delightful sense of the absurd (his show sometimes
features elaborate dance numbers) and an eagerness to strip away
all sorts of pretensions and self-serving myths. Consider his take
on the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and its ubiquitous
slogan, "Save the Planet": "[That's] the most pandering corporate
slogan I've ever heard," he writes. "`Save the Planet.' You can't
get away from it. It's on every sign, every chip, every matchbook:
`Save the Planet.' Like you can really save the planet from people
in the first place, and if you wanted to, you could do it by
drinking and gambling at the Hard Rock. `Hey, not only am I getting
shit-faced drunk and picking up cute chicks, I'm saving the
planet.'...Every time I play craps there, when I roll the dice I
yell, `Save the Planet!' Then, win or lose, I loudly announce, `I
don't care if I win or not, I just want the planet to be safe,'
while I count my hundred dollar chips."

Although Carey openly disdains Hollywood activism--he winces at
the mention of people such as Alec Baldwin and Barbra
Streisand--there is a proto-political message in much of his humor.
As the Hard Rock example suggests, Carey believes that people are
far more resistant to soothing, feel-good rhetoric than its
practitioners may fully grasp. In an age of ubiquitous and
self-serving spin, that is no small point.

Senior Editor Nick Gillespie and writer Steve Kurtz talked with
Carey over lunch at the original Bob's Big Boy (his choice) in
Burbank, California. Here's a condensed version of their
wide-ranging conversation.

Reason: Much of your humor pokes fun at liberal
Hollywood sensibilities. What kind of response does that provoke
from your peers?

DrewCarey: People look at me
like a drunk uncle: "Oh, that Drew!" Everybody in Hollywood loves
symbolic gestures. Have you been to the Hard Rock Casino in Vegas?
There's nothing save-the-planetish about it. Hollywood people are
filled with guilt: white guilt, liberal guilt, money guilt. They
feel bad that they're so rich, they feel they don't work that much
for all that money--and they don't, for the amount of money they
make. There's no way I can justify my salary level, but I'm
learning to live with it.

I've got to say that I don't see myself as some sort of
political type like Alec Baldwin or Barbra Streisand. I don't want
to come across like that. I'd be embarrassed if that was the way I
came across. I should watch what I say about Streisand: She could
call a congressman, not have my garbage picked up anymore, change
my zoning laws, totally screw me over.

When I did Comic Relief, I did it to be on the show; it's a
badge of honor as a comedian to do that show. Comic Relief does a
lot of good, but homeless people really bug the hell out of me.
They're smelly, they're always asking me for money. I mean, I like
to help out, but I also do this in my act where I say, "I don't
know how much money we raised to help the homeless tonight, but the
food backstage was great." And it was: all gourmet-catered, all the
drinks were free, not a homeless guy in sight. Everyone in
Hollywood comes to these things and then says, "Look how we cured
homelessness." They feel guilty if they party and there's not a
good reason for it. If you had the same show with all the best
comedians and no charity involved, they'd be like, "Uh-oh, can't do
that." They want to make themselves look good--a lot of it is about
feeding egos. My publicist always calls me with charity appearance
requests, and I turn them down now. I told her I'm not doing any
more charity where I show up and say, "Hi, I'm Drew Carey for the
American Cancer Society."

Reason: So you're in favor of cancer?

Carey: No (laughs). I'm in favor of
not inflating your ego, of only doing good deeds to pump
yourself up. Which is about as anti-Hollywood, as anti-celebrity as
you can get.

Still, I wish there were more organizations like [Comic Relief].
Then the government wouldn't step in all over the place. Then you
could decide for yourself to help the homeless or not help the
homeless.

Reason: What's your basic attitude toward
government?

Carey: The less the better. As far as your
personal goals are and what you actually want to do with your life,
it should never have to do with the government. You should never
depend on the government for your retirement, your financial
security, for anything. If you do, you're screwed.

Reason: But you were in the Marines reserve,
weren't you?--

Carey: That's all the government should be:
Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines (laughs). P.J. O'Rourke once said
the government has passed enough laws--it should just stop. It
oversteps its bounds so often. Giving it a little bit of power is
like getting a little bit pregnant, or thinking that a little bit
of sex will do you for a long time--it just doesn't work that
way.

Reason: Is that the case with TV content
ratings?

Carey: I'm not against ratings per se. I think
more information is always good. But I certainly don't think the
government has to step in and set guidelines for how shows should
be rated.

Reason: Former Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), one of
the main forces behind ratings, said that if TV people didn't
"clean up its act," the government would have to do it for
them.

Carey: He's a bowtied prick. What right does he
have to tell me what I can and cannot watch? Change the channel if
you don't like what's on TV! The government is really into
"protecting" people. The FCC says you can't broadcast certain words
and certain pictures. It says it's protecting citizens. But I'm
sitting in my home with DirecTV and can watch whatever I want. I
can afford the best pornography--laser-disc porn! The government's
not protecting me from anything.

All the government's doing is discriminating against poor
people. It thinks poor people are like cows, that poor people can't
think straight: If we let them hear dirty words or see dirty
pictures, there's going to be madness! If you're poor and
all you can afford is a 12-inch black-and-white TV and can't pay
for cable--you're so protected! You'd probably be happier if you
could see some pornography, a pair of titties, once in a while on
free TV. But a pair of titties on free TV? The government figures
if you saw that, you'd just explode!

Reason: You devote a chapter of your book to
ABC's own network censor, filled with examples of what was and
wasn't approved for your show. The focus on particular words is
both pathetic and hilarious: In one case, he asked you to change
dwarf to little person; in another, he asked you
to substitute hooker or prostitute for
whore; in a third, he passed on butt wipe but
OK'd butt weasel.

Carey: People who have read the book have said
that's their favorite chapter. You just don't normally get that
sort of inside look at the process.

Reason: Do you ever catch the censor
cursing?

Carey: Yes, yes: "What the fuck's going on? You
can't say that!"

Reason: Would the use of blue language make
your television show better?

Carey: There'd be more stuff to joke about, and
it would make the show funnier. As it is, there are certain parts
of life you can discuss and certain parts you can't. If my
character stubs his toe really bad, he can't say, "Aw fuck, I
stubbed my toe!" He has to say, "Ooch, ooch, ooch."

Reason: Why is cursing funnier?

Carey: It's not always. But comedy's all about
exaggeration. To do that sometimes you need the strongest words you
can use. In the book, I tell this joke about a man and a woman who
meet in a bar. They're both divorced because their spouses thought
they were too kinky. So they go back to the woman's place and she
goes to her bedroom and puts on black leather boots, a miniskirt,
comes out with a riding crop and some handcuffs. The guy's putting
on his coat and heading out the door. "Hey, where you going? I
thought we were going to get kinky," she says. "Hey," he says, "I
fucked your dog, I shit in your purse. I'm outta here!" That just
isn't funny if you say, "I had sex with your dog and defecated in
your purse."

Reason: What do you think about comedians like
Bill Cosby who crusade against dirty comics?

Carey: He has a market and I have a market. I
don't care if my jokes are appropriate for a kid.

Reason: While you're Cleveland's favorite son,
you write longingly of your years living in Las Vegas, a city which
many people see as the embodiment of vice and excess, of everything
that's wrong with America. What do you like about Vegas?

Carey: Vegas is everything that's
right with America. You can do whatever you want, 24 hours
a day. They've effectively legalized everything there. You don't
have to gamble if you don't want to. There's tons of
churches in Vegas, too: You'll see a church right next to a casino.
But a lot of people like gambling, so they make money off it.
Nobody forces you to put money in a machine and pull the handle.
But the fact is they allow it. Nevada's one of the most
conservative states in the Union, but you can do what you want in
Vegas and nobody judges you.

And they've got great schools in Vegas (laughs).

Reason: So why do so many people dump on
Vegas?

Carey: I think a lot of people are afraid of
freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a
box: "Be here at 9, leave at 5, we'll take care of you." People
like that cradle-to-grave concept because it says you don't have to
think too much, you don't have to worry too much, because someone
else is looking out for you. But that also means you can't do as
much as you want. You have to do what someone else says is right,
what someone else thinks you should do. Why should someone else put
a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?

Reason: You write about the 1970s--something
else people heap scorn on--in a similar vein.

Carey: Again, a lot of people don't like people
having fun. And the '70s were all about doing as much debauchery
and having as much fun as you possibly could: Fuck anybody you
wanted, do any drug you wanted to.

Reason: I take it you favor drug
legalization?

Carey: Yeah. But every time you bring that up,
people always ask, "Oh, you think they should sell heroin and crack
in stores?" Sure: Smoke crack, die, get out of my way. As long as I
don't have to pay for it (laughs). There's always the argument that
not everyone is as responsible as you are, that we have to protect
everyone from people who would smoke crack and not be responsible.
Like we're doing now, right? Liquor prohibition led to the rise of
organized crime in America, and drug prohibition has led to the
rise of the gang problems we have now.

Reason: Prohibition also leads to another
topic: the Kennedys. In an earlier draft of your book, you had an
entire chapter devoted to that brood. What is it that you hate
about them?

Carey: There were a lot of questions about
language in the book. I said, "Look, give me some of the bad
language, and I'll take out the whole Kennedy chapter." Plus, the
publisher wasn't sure it would pass the lawyers. I read in USA
Today that a Kennedy has never lost an election in
Massachusetts. I wrote about what it would take for a Kennedy to
lose one: They bust into a bank, pistol whip the manager, fuck the
teller up the ass, take turns posing for pictures. And nobody would
say a thing: "Those Kennedy's are great, aren't they? I can't
believe a Kennedy fucked me up the ass!" They can get away
with anything.

Reason: Your comic persona and TV show
successfully blend a working-man shtick and a willingness to play
with dramatic conventions and audience expectations. What's the
appeal of those things?

Carey: I try not to lose touch with [working
people]. I go back to Cleveland a lot. I love the normalcy of
Cleveland. There's regular people there. I like [the TV show]
King of the Hill because it's about normal people. I
don't miss the economic insecurity, the living paycheck to
paycheck. Twice when I was living in Vegas, I almost lost my rent
money playing blackjack, got down to my last two dollars.

I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore. But I don't
want to lose touch with things like eating in Bob's Big Boy. I feel
comfortable here.

The show is very easy to relate to [in that way]. I wanted to do
a show based on what my life would be like if I had never become a
comedian. I would have had some bullshit degree, some general job,
going nowhere. People laugh to forget their troubles, and to forget
their troubles they like to look at people who aren't doing better
than they are. Nothing's funny about someone who's successful.
People who are happy and adjusted just aren't funny. Even when
people are rich and successful on TV shows, there's always some
trouble--you have to poke holes in them, throw them out of a job,
put a pie in the face.

Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small,
whatever you can get away with. In a promotional bit for the show,
Mimi [a character from the show] and I are walking down a dirt road
with fishing poles, like Andy and Opie on The Andy Griffith
Show. The original script was that she would push me in the
water and I'd be floundering like I couldn't swim. When we did the
filming, I said, "Wouldn't it be funnier if I just floated like I
was dead?" And it's funnier that way because it went the extra
mile.

What also helps our show is that we never take ourselves
seriously. Here's a show that can wink at itself. Everyone involved
knows we're just a sitcom. You'll never see a "very special
episode" of the show. The episode featuring Speedy the Crippled Dog
is the most we're going to do.

Reason: Your book is different from most
celebrity tomes. It's not simply an autobiography or a reprinting
of your stand-up routines, although it has some of both. You've got
a half-dozen short stories, a section on how the network censor
operates, an entire chapter devoted to penis jokes, and then some.
How did the book's form come about?

Carey: I didn't want to do what every other
celebrity does. I couldn't imagine sitting down and writing my
thoughts on the universe. Who cares? Really, who gives a shit what
a comic thinks about life in general?

I only wanted to do short stories. I loved the old stories in
National Lampoon, like the original story the movie
Vacation was based on. I used to laugh at them until I
cried. I like short stories, and I don't think I'm good enough to
write a novel (laughs). The publisher was hoping to get Drew on
beer, Drew on dating, that sort of thing. I wanted to do the
stories, and I wanted to do a chapter on how ABC's standards and
practices works. So I gave the publisher some of the other stuff to
make them happy. The important thing is that it's all meant to be
funny.

Reason: You cast aspersions on celebrities who
unveil dark secrets, but you also mention that you were molested as
a boy and that you tried to commit suicide during your Vegas
years.

Carey: The reason I mentioned that stuff is
that I wanted to tell people that you can get over it, that you
don't have to be embarrassed by it. I mean, I'm very well-adjusted
in real life. Well, pretty well. Most parts, anyway. You could ask
my girlfriends (laughs).

What I don't like are celebrities who use it as their crutch all
the time, who use it as a calling card: "Hi, I'm fill-in-the-blank
and I was molested." Shut up already, man. It's one thing to
mention it and move on. I have two pages on being molested when I
was 9 in the book, and The Globe had this big story: "Drew
Carey Bombshell!" They didn't mention one thing about the chapter
called "101 Big Dick Jokes."

Reason: You have the only hit show on ABC in
recent memory, but you've also been quick to point out that network
shows are nowhere near as big as they used to be. Why is that?

Carey: DirecTV, maybe. The network shows are
fine; it's just that there's so many other things to watch. We'll
never see national shows with 45 shares again. Before, you never
had a choice. You had to watch M*A*S*H, or whatever was on
the three big networks. Now, if I don't come across a regional
sports show or a history special I want to watch, maybe
I'll watch M*A*S*H, or whatever's the best of what's
broadcast. I don't even watch the local affiliates here in Los
Angeles anymore. When I first got DirecTV, the installer told me I
needed an antenna to pick up the local broadcast channels. I had
him put one in, but I never turn them on.

Reason: How are the networks responding?

Carey: They can't assume everyone is going to
watch the new "fall season," that people will tune into something
right when it goes on the air. My show was like that. You have to
get used to it; some people still don't [like the show], which is
fine with me. We had kind of a slow growth in audience. The TV
season is a year-long thing now, and the networks are starting to
look at it that way, thanks to cable, satellites, and
competition.

Reason: A lot of people in your position must
hate the competition. Since viewers have more options, they're
tougher to hold onto.

Carey: Some people don't like competition
because it makes them work harder, better. I'm competitive at
everything. When I play poker, I don't like losing the pot. The
first Monopoly game I played with my brothers, I hated losing so
much, I just had to beat them. I love beating people (laughs). But
it's a natural driving force, a way of testing yourself, of
measuring how you're doing. It's insane to [hate competition]. How
can people not know that competition makes everything better?

Reason: You've got the book out. The show's
starting its third season. What's next on your plate?

Carey: I'll tell you what's going to be the
most depressing day in my life: when my book gets thrown in the
discount bin with a "50 Percent Off" sticker on it. This year, I'm
going to try an experiment with my creative process. When the
show's in production, we work for three weeks at a time and then
take a week off. When I'm working, I'm going to avoid all media. No
newspapers, no magazines, no movies, no radio, no TV. I'm just
going to do creative work. During the week off, I'll catch up. When
I read a headline like "Mideast Talks Stalled by Bombing," I wonder
what the hell I could possibly miss: Talk about the '70s! They just
keep that headline handy; they probably even just use the same
photo.